Star Pepper: A Spicy Adventure in Interstellar Capitalism

By Matthew Candelaria

Star Pepper is a space opera adventure story with light satirical and sensual overtones. It's a quick read, meant to be enjoyed in a few sittings or even one sitting. The ideal audience is an adult male who enjoys speculative fiction and is looking for a light read to entertain himself during his commute or breaks in his workday. A short plot su

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew B. Candelaria
• Release date: Jul 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781732995444

Matthew Candelaria

Matthew Candelaria is an award-winning science fiction author recognized for both his fiction and his criticism. Born in Denver, he attended the University of Kansas for his PhD, where he had the opportunity to meet and work with many of the leading names in the genre, including both classic and contemporary authors. He is a full-time writer, creating blogs and other online content for numerous skilled professionals in dentistry, surgery, and law. Though he has lived most of his life in Denver, he is also a world traveler, having visited more than 20 countries, sometimes spending months at a time abroad. The combination of deep, personal roots and global exposure informs his fiction as a continual zone of contact among diverse peoples and cultures.

Book preview

1

This time I’m going to save some of my share, Parn said to himself as his heavy boots clanked down the starship’s gangplank. He owed that much, at least, to Vigar. The man had gone beyond mentoring the young corer, he had trusted him with his legacy. Parn couldn’t let it be for nothing, although that was certainly what he’d done with it so far.

There would be plenty of money to save, as this world was the find of a lifetime. A seemingly endless forest of phase one star pepper trees, stretching all the way to the horizon. And rising out of the canopy of red-brown leaves were the scattered spires of the phase two trees, the real treasure. If it had been found by a wildcatter, he was probably rich beyond imagination now. If it had been pinpointed by a corporate nav team, well, they were probably getting an office party this tenday, with free snacks and a cash bar (with a free drink coupon for Employee of the Pentad). There might even be comp time for all the overtime they worked to get here first.

Parnassus, now is your assigned harvest time, the robot said. The voice came to him from the robot’s speaker, the speaker in his helmet, and his internal integrated interface (Tri-I). Although the air here was breathable and safe, the helmet would protect him from the toxic gasses given off by the star pepper.

Parn looked over his shoulder at the robot standing behind him. Its ten legs were bent double so it didn’t tower over him too much, although this didn’t help its appearance, which was already too much like a spider.

Yeah, let’s get going.

I will take you to our first assigned tree. Spiderbot grabbed him in its four arms, then used its long legs to walk across the canopy, reaching down amid the branches to grab the sturdy trunks of the phase one trees. When they reached the assigned phase two tree, it held Parn out to the trunk. He stuck his boot spurs into the tree. Then the robot stretched a safety strap around the trunk and fastened it to Parn.

The tree sure looked ripe. The bark was distended outward, so it was likely filling with fluid. Looking down, the network of roots that fed from the phase one trees into the phase two were large and knotty. And the color was a deep brown. Also a good sign. Now it was time for the real test.

Parn lifted the helmet of his suit, removed a glove, and took out a corkscrew-like corer. He screwed it slowly into the bark. He could immediately tell the pepper was ripe. The stench of volatile organic compounds filled his nostrils. When he pulled the core out, he looked at it. It was a dark grey, almost black. Good color. He took the tiniest pinch he could manage and rubbed it between his finger and thumb, spreading it into a very fine layer. Spread out, it looked light gray on his dark skin. As he turned his hand in the light, the fine flecks sparkled. He could feel the cooling effect as VOCs evaporated off his skin. He smelled it: isoprene, acetone, and terpenes. He touched his finger to his tongue.

At this concentration, the burn was intense, but Parn was used to it, and he could separate out the flavors as he rubbed his tongue along the roof of his mouth. Definitely ripe. A fine flavor, it would probably be graded as zytharine for the mild alcohol and piney hop-like character.

He passed the core over to spiderbot. The spiderbot had three functions. First, to transport Parn, his gear, and the harvested pepper. Second, to taste the star pepper and confirm that it was ready to harvest. Third, to watch Parn to make sure he didn’t slip any of the precious pepper into his pockets. Just a pocketful a day would be worth more than his legal share from this voyage. The spiderbot took a small sample of the pepper and confirmed Parn’s judgement that this tree was ready for harvest.

Once spiderbot gave the confirming beep, Parn put his helmet back on. He got out his hand saw and began working through the bark. This was all done with hand tools to reduce the risk of explosions. Since that’s what the star pepper was for in the first place, exploding to propel the seed pods into space, the risk was great. And if one tree went off, not only could it destroy the entire expedition, it would likely set off the entire grove, a loss that would make stockholders on a hundred worlds weep.

Once he had cut a hole large enough to enter the tree, Parn pulled the bark off. The putty-like star pepper broke in an irregular plane at the tip of the cone formed by his angled cuts. He handed the bark section to the spiderbot. As the robot held it steady, he started working at it with his curved scoop-like knife, cutting the pepper into chunks about a half kilo each. He handed them to the spiderbot, who wrapped them in tightly sealed plastic, then placed the chunks into its expandable carrier unit.

When he had gotten all the pepper but the centimeter closest to the bark, he began scraping the bark. This B-grade pepper was still valuable, but it was worth much less because its flavor wouldn’t be as good, and it was contaminated with bark.

When spiderbot was satisfied that all the star pepper had been removed from the bark section, it discarded it. Then Parn got to work on what was in the tree itself. First, he started clearing the pepper right inside the door. He scooped out half kilo chunks, working downward at first, until he reached the bottom of the chamber. He worked carefully and quickly as Vigar, a fifth-generation corer, had taught him, probing a centimeter or so past the vertical of his current section to make sure he wasn’t too close to the edge, which would affect the quality of the pepper. Although it was hard to identify the chambers from the outside of the tree, Vigar had taught Parn how to see the slight curve of the swollen trunk, so he almost always ended up close to the bottom of one. Once he had removed all the A-grade star pepper he could reach from outside, he started removing the B-grade at the bottom so he could step inside. Then he detached himself from the safety strap and worked from the inside.

Spiderbot stayed mostly outside, but it extended its head and a receiver for the star pepper chunks inside. The head provided light as well as a watchful eye. It wasn’t hard work cutting the soft star pepper, but it was tedious and demanding. He had to keep the chunks within 25 grams of the target weight, and he couldn’t accidentally penetrate the B-grade layer. Once he had cut into a chamber, he had to clean it all out in one day. The star pepper began drying out immediately when the chamber was opened.

He fell into a rhythm. Like an industrious form of tai chi, he performed the basic motions again and again, working against the resistance of his own muscles—the soft pepper provided none—to create the uniform size, shape, and quality the company demanded. The hours fell away as the pepper accumulated. After he had gotten all that he could reach, he set up an adjustable wheeled platform so he could reach what was at the top of the chamber.

For meals, he hooked himself back up to the safety strap and hung outside the chamber to eat. The air was so contaminated during his first meal break, he had to eat with his helmet on. He attached a tube of food paste to a port and the feeder sucked it through when he engaged the nozzle. On his second break the air was clean enough that he could take his helmet off and eat some nutrient bars. The taste was about the same, but he liked the chewing.

By the time Parn finished, it was well after local dark—the next day. It took more than a full day to clear out a single chamber. There were procedures that could reduce the burden for the individual worker—have two people in the chamber at a time or have people trade off working in the chamber—but these were either unworkable (two people in a chamber at once was inefficient and crowded most of the time), wasted time (having people wait to get on shift), or risked drying out the star pepper (if people ran late for their shift). So it was one man and one bot per chamber.

After scooping out the last of the B-grade to spiderbot’s satisfaction, Parn let the spiderbot grab him and carry him down from the tree. Laden with about 50,000 kilos of star pepper, the spider bot was too heavy to be supported by the phase one trees, so it walked on the ground underneath the canopy, carefully distributing its weight on its enlarged inflatable feet and shining its light on the dark ground. This gave Parn a chance to look at the local fauna.

Star pepper was an invasive species, but it took hundreds of years for the trees to mature, so a harvestable grove had been completely assimilated by local wildlife and some native plant species that could tolerate the toxic soil that the trees generated. Some corers kept notebooks about the wildlife and plants they observed in the star pepper groves. To Parn it was more a casual amusement that helped keep him awake as he headed back to the ship. If he fell asleep, it would be difficult to wake up and deal with the end-of-shift procedures. It couldn’t be more than casual amusement because most of these species would be wiped out when the star pepper exploded.

Back at the ship, the shift supervisors first washed off his suit, carefully collecting the slurry that came off him. This star pepper residue was separated, centrifuged, and sold as C-grade, the only grade that Parn and his fellow corers would be able to afford, and even then it was a luxury that Parn had never been able to fit into his budget. Then there was some paperwork to fill out before he could hit his bunk. Well, not his bunk. With irregular shifts over a day long, it would be inefficient to assign corers to a bunk, so he just flopped down in the first available. He barely had time to dream about how he was going to blow his money before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that seemed far too short.

It was when the alarm went off that he focused on saving again. He remembered what it would take. If he could save three-quarters of his share, he would be able to outfit an expedition after just ten trips. Then he would be able to reach the secret star pepper planet that Vigar had given him the map for. One last coring expedition, and he’d never have to do it again. He’d never have to worry about making rent or paying the power bill or scraping together loose change to afford a nutrient bar. And again he vowed that this would be the time he would start saving his share.

2

When the harvest was finished, all the robots were disabled and left in a heap near the ship. Their mass could be more profitably replaced with star pepper. Parn knew that if the company weren’t afraid the corers might coordinate theft of the remaining pepper, or destroy the ship in a mutiny, they might be left, too.

Instead, the company kept careful track of all personnel and even sponsored a launch party with free food and alcohol. It was a cynical practice, because it allowed them to appear generous without actually giving very much. They knew that the corers would be exhausted from over a tenday of 30+ hour shifts, while the ship’s crew—who had been resting during the planetfall—would all be too busy to participate.

But like most of the other corers, Parn made the effort and showed up to the party. Of course, it wasn’t like he had a huge number of choices. Two of the cabins had been converted to cargo holds for star pepper. All the corers were now sharing one bunkroom. Although there were hammocks strung in every conceivable way, there were still not enough bunks for everyone to sleep at once.

Some of the greenhorns were sleeping on the floor in the bunkroom or the hall. They would regret that when the blue-and-maroon-clad ship’s marines rousted them. Even if they managed to avoid the marines, the extra g’s of launch would make them very uncomfortable.

But down in the cafeteria, there were a few of the crash couches available. Parn went by the bar and grabbed a whiskey with a beer chaser. As it was being poured, he looked at the posters on the wall. One of them showed a man peeing on a stage one tree, with his back facing out. There was a red circle and a line through him. The text said, Don’t urinate in the forest. Urine in the suit will be carried back to the ship. The other one had a picture of one of the steins used in the cafeteria. Around the edge a circle of words said, Yesterday’s beer is today’s urine is tomorrow’s beer. At the bottom, it said, Conserve!

He chuckled because they’d forgotten to change out the posters. Those were planetfall posters and should have been replaced with the launch slate that encouraged him to find appropriate seating during acceleration or take a bracing position. And it wasn’t as if they were actual posters. They were virtual posters transmitted to his Tri-I, which overlayed them on the blank wall. They could be changed at the press of a button. But the yahoo whose job it was had forgotten to press the button.

At least the bartender was doing his job. Parn took his shot glass and his stein. Then he found a spot at a table with some of the other oldtimers. He threw back the shot, then started sipping his beer as he tried to listen to Mehany telling her story.

It was a great old one about the days when corers got paid by the gram. She and another corer got in a tussle at the weighing station. It got a little heated until Mehany pushed the other corer, hard, on his shoulders. She was a big woman, and she wasn’t kidding around. She pushed him so hard that the impact ignited the star pepper residue on his suit. It blew Mehany back and blew him clean off the ship. Of course, he broke over 100 bones and died a slow painful death because the ship’s doctor couldn’t save him, but Mehany told it well, and everyone laughed.

When it was his turn, Parn told one about a defective robot who misread the star pepper residue on his suit as stolen pepper. In the original event, the robot said almost nothing, just carried Parn bodily to the brig. Where he waited for days for someone to check the file and see that everything had been done properly. What he didn’t tell about the event was how he got his share docked because he wasn’t harvesting for most of the planetfall. That led to some really lean pentads, and once you’ve spent five tendays being hungry, you can get pretty desperate. He remembered being all but dead from starvation before he was able to get a place on a new ship.

But he didn’t tell that part of the story. Instead, he gave the robot some crazy lines that made it the perfect straight man. And when he got to the point where the robot hauled him off, Parn grabbed his own shirt with his hand and yanked himself out of his chair. Everyone loved that bit.

As he hit the floor, the warning siren went off. They were finally ready to start the return journey. Parn jumped up and got back into his chair. Sensing his weight, the restraints slithered out over him. There was a chorus of clanking sounds as all the steins were held to the tables magnetically and their lids sealed shut. No beer to drink and with his story thoroughly interrupted, Parn just let himself lean back in the chair and wait.

Then the engines ignited and the three g’s pressed down on him like a big heavy blanket. Combined with the weight of the tenday of long shifts and short sleep plus the recent alcohol, Parn sank into sleep without even knowing it.

The next thing he knew, he was being roused by one of the ship’s marines. The party was long over—his beer was gone—and he had to vacate the cafeteria so those who had been sleeping could now get something to eat. That meant that he, and all the other sleepy corers who were being roused, could now move to bunks to get better rest.

There was a line to get into the bunkroom. Parn leaned up against the wall and looked at the poster on the opposite wall. It showed a picture of a man standing with a phase 2 tree behind him. He had taken the helmet off and his face was turning green. The poster read, It’s not ‘Fresh’ air: Outgassing from trees can kill. Parn knew a lot of the corers liked to inhale the gasses and get high before they started cutting into the tree.

Vigar had told him that was a good way to get killed, so he’d never done it. And in his own career, he’d seen plenty of evidence to support Vigar’s assertion. The toxicity wasn’t so bad as the poster made it out, but working hundreds of meters in the air, you needed all your wits about you to keep from making a fatal mistake.

While Parn was waiting, somebody figured out about the posters. The display suddenly switched to show a man with an angry expression standing beside a bed. He was pounding his fist into his other palm. In the bed, a fat man with ugly animalian features dozed. The caption read, Everyone Is Tired. Give up your bed on time to avoid fights. Parn snickered. They were so late making the change, they had completely skipped the launch slate of posters. This warning was valuable: fights over a bed could get deadly, and because they disturbed all the other sleepy cranky people, they could spiral out of control.

Eventually they’d cleared out enough people, and it was Parn’s turn to stumble into the perpetual twilight of the bunkroom—just enough light to let you find your way in and out and facilitate supervision, but not so much that it interfered with most people’s sleep. Parn was lucky enough to get a bottom bunk. He kicked his shoes off—shoes in bed was a wakeable offense—and let himself collapse onto the bed. It was still warm and smelled of BO. There was a little drool spot on the pillow. He groaned and flipped the pillow over. The other side didn’t smell any better, but it was cool and dry. That was enough. Parn fell asleep almost immediately.

When he was awakened to let the next shift of corers sleep, Parn stumbled out of bed and toward the showers. There was a brief wait, and he said Hi to Mehany, who looked as tired as Parn felt. Her dark hair, streaked with gray, was frizzy and untamed right now, and her eyes were barely open between the sagging lids and the puffy dark bags underneath.

They stepped into the white tile antechamber and threw their clothes into the hamper. The hamper read his ID on the clothes and made sure his alternate outfit was waiting for him after the shower. His one pocket’s worth of personal effects—the typical allotment for corers—went into a small plastic container, whisked by robotic hands to the other side of the shower, too.

Naked, they rubbed the chemical cleaner all